COLLECTOR'S NOTES
By Joyce Hill
John Brewster, Jr., the deaf-mute itinerant painter born in Connecticut in 1766, had a long and apparently self-supporting career which bridged two centuries. As he sought commissions in towns from Poughkeepsie to Portland, Brewster typically advertised his professional services in local newspapers, usually identifying himself as a miniature as well as a portrait painter. Curiously, although over one-hundred of his portraits have been located—some signed or documented, others attributed to him on stylistic grounds—miniatures by Brewster have remained frustratingly elusive. Folk art historian Nina Fletcher Little, in her chaptef on John Brewster, Jr., in American Folk Painters of Three Centuries, noted that "Only three miniatures have been discovered, recognizable through their similarity of technique to his larger works!" Several other miniatures including that of Mrs. Benjamin Greene (nee Lydia Clarke) in the collection of the Lexington (Massachusetts) Historical Society have also been attributed to Brewster. However, speculations about his smaller works have continued because no signed examples could be found. Now a recently discovered miniature of Benjamin Apthorp Gould (Fig. 1) provides a new touchstone for evaluating "portraits in small" in relation to Brewster. Affixed to the back of the ivory of the Gould miniature is a paper inscribed: "Benj. Gould, Jr. Taken by/Mr. John Brewster, Jr./Oct. 1809!' (Fig. la)Not surprisingly,the miniature is remarkably consistent with Brewster's larger-scaled portraits, not only
Fig. 1
Fig. la
Benjamin Apthorp Gould John Brewster, Jr. Inscription on paper affixed to the back ofthe miniature on ivory reads: "Benj. Gould Jr. Taken by/Mr. John Brewster Jr./Oct. 1809' Newburyport, Massachusetts. 2/ 3 4"x 2" oval. Private Collection.
in style, and in the posing of the subject, but in the painting of the costume detail as well. In the autumn of 1809, John Brewster, Jr., apparently spent several months in the household of the Gould family in Newburyport, Massachusetts. In addition to the October date on Benjamin,Jr.'s miniature, an advertisement in the Newburyport Herald for November 17, 1809 announced Brewster's availability as a portraitist and that he had "taken lodgings for a few weeks at Capt. Benjamin Gould's, Federal Street..."(Fig. 2)Capt. Benjamin was the father of the Benjamin depicted in the portrait miniature. The miniature subject, Benjamin Gould, Jr., has been depicted in a black coat, brown-striped vest, white stock and tie. Brewster used some crosshatching in modeling the contours of Gould's face, as well as in developing a background within the oval for his subject. A similar technique was used in the miniature,New England Gentleman (Fig. 3), an earlier attribution to Brewster made by Mrs. Little. In addition to the blue cross-hatching of the backgrounds, the two portrait miniatures share other characteristics—the direct frontal gaze of the eyes, the nose delineated in three-quarter position with a dark shadow cast at the end of the nose, and lips separated by a pleasantly curved but well-defined line. Another miniature—still unlocated —of Daniel Cleaves of Saco, Maine (Fig. 4) was attributed to the hand of John Brewster, Jr., by Mrs. Little in Three Centuries of American Folk Painting. This miniature, although 49